Predefining a Dashboard

Quick reference

• 00:04 Okay, in this video I want to talk about pre-defining a dashboard.
• 00:07 So in the last video, we just created a dashboard and we started dragging and
• 00:11 dropping things and sort of positioning them around as we went.
• 00:14 And that's probably how you're going to do it most of the time, but there's
• 00:17 another way you can do it as well and I want to talk about that in this video.
• 00:19 So let's come down here and create a new dashboard.
• 00:22 And right off the bat, let me just kind of make this bigger.
• 00:26 Let's go 1,700 by 900.
• 00:30 That looks pretty good.
• 00:31 And let's come down here and change the name of this.
• 00:36 And let's call this predefined dashboard, whatever.
• 00:41 Now you see on this left-hand side, these are our sheets.
• 00:44 And in the last video, we just dragged them in there and started working.
• 00:47 But if you look down here, you see these objects and
• 00:50 we can use these to sort of create a template for our dashboard and
• 00:54 then sort of makes it easier to drag and drop the things that we want later on.
• 00:58 So you can see we have different objects here, we have the horizontal,
• 01:03 this is things that are side by side, we have vertical one on top of another,
• 01:07 we have just blank spaces.
• 01:09 And there's some other things as well, text and images,
• 01:11 we'll look at those in other videos.
• 01:12 But for now I just want to look at these main things.
• 01:14 So usually I just grabbed the horizontal one and bring it over here.
• 01:18 And when I do, you'll see the entire area sort of highlights.
• 01:21 So I could just drop that in there.
• 01:23 And it says horizontal side by side, but we haven't dragged the second part of it,
• 01:28 the other horizontal side of it, so it's just showing one big thing here.
• 01:33 So if we wanted say for instance two of them side by side, we would have to grab
• 01:37 this a second time, bring it over here, and position it exactly where want it.
• 01:41 So I really have to bring it right over to the edge here before this highlights.
• 01:46 You see, like that.
• 01:48 Now I could pop it in there, and you see now we've got these two side by side, and
• 01:52 just come through here and do this however you want to design your dashboard.
• 01:56 So we can grab a vertical one and so I could sort of bring it down here and
• 02:00 you can see this sort of highlights and then boom, there we go.
• 02:03 So now we have one big one over here and two above each other, above and
• 02:07 below each other right here.
• 02:09 And we can also sort of grab these and drag them around and resize them that way.
• 02:15 And just get this however you want for your particular dashboard.
• 02:19 So okay, that's looking pretty good.
• 02:21 Now maybe we want another vertical one here to make it look sort of like the last
• 02:26 video, so I'll drag this down like this.
• 02:28 Now we have all of these things, maybe I want to grab a blank one and
• 02:32 put it right in the middle.
• 02:34 So now we have like this, that's kind of cool.
• 02:37 Just whatever you want to do, however you want to do this, and
• 02:40 as you play around with this, you can see different things.
• 02:42 We have one that goes all the way over.
• 02:45 We bring this to the side, it can be all the way up and down like that.
• 02:49 And any sort of configuration you can dream up, you can just sort of drag and
• 02:53 drop these things.
• 02:54 So now when you're good and ready, you could just save this for
• 02:58 later if you wanted to or you could start dragging things in.
• 03:01 And now here's where it gets a little weird.
• 03:03 You can see right here, our key thing popped up in this far right hand one, and
• 03:08 maybe that's what we want, and maybe it's not.
• 03:10 You grab the next one and that pops up, and
• 03:14 usually this is sort of okay, but you can get into problems.
• 03:19 You can pop another one, that pops up.
• 03:20 You'll see they're all side by side which is not really great and
• 03:23 might not be what you want, you might want,
• 03:25 like in the last video where we had them all stacked above each other like that.
• 03:29 And that's where this method kind of falls apart.
• 03:32 In older versions of Tableau, it would do that by default.
• 03:35 Nowadays, it does not.
• 03:37 It just sort of guesses and throws them in here.
• 03:40 Sometimes it looks like this.
• 03:42 Sometimes they're stacked above each other.
• 03:43 Sometimes these legend things will be down here in the bottom left hand corner.
• 03:48 It really just kind of depends.
• 03:50 So as a workaround, what you really want to do, let's come up here and
• 03:53 clear this sheet.
• 03:54 What you want to do is grab one of your visualizations, bring it over, drop it in,
• 03:59 and it will by default, put the little legend thing right here on
• 04:03 the far right hand side, which is probably what you want.
• 04:06 Now from here, you come down here and
• 04:10 start dragging in these other options and
• 04:14 sort of designing this thing however you want.
• 04:19 So we can then grab some more of these, maybe do it like this, whatever.
• 04:26 We can grab another one, stick it over here, right.
• 04:31 So now after we've predesigned our dashboard with whatever we want, and
• 04:35 this guy is still over here, now we can start to bring in these guys and
• 04:39 you can see boom it starts to put them one on top of another right there,
• 04:43 which is probably more what we like, what we want.
• 04:46 So just sort of be aware of that when you're doing this method.
• 04:50 Me personally, I use the method we used in the last video to where I don't really
• 04:54 predesign my dashboards.
• 04:56 But if you can, there are sort of two ways to do that, and that's cool.
• 04:59 So that's all for this video.
• 05:00 In the next video, I'll show you how to fit to width.

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